A scene from “Join or Die”

John Adams: Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments, that many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries even before Parliament existed. We have a right to them, derived from our Maker. Our forefathers have earned and bought liberty for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasures and their blood. Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the earth. It stands on this principle: That the meanest and lowest of the people are, by the unalterable, indefeasible laws of God and nature, as well entitled to the benefit of the air to breathe, light to see, food to eat and clothes to wear as the nobles or the king. That is liberty. And liberty will reign in America!